When white America catches a cold, black America catches pneumonia

Every few years, America catches a nasty “cold” that afflicts untold damage on its communities and citizenry. These colds aren’t always pathological, and they manifest in different forms, but the carnage they wreak on our nation’s most vulnerable is always staggering.

In 2005, this cold took the form of one of the costliest hurricanes on record, slamming into Louisiana and Texas and leaving $125 billion in damage in its wake. A few years later, we suffered as a nation from the Great Recession, which was brought on by the collapse...